is a formal constructed language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs to control the behavior of a machine or to express algorithms.
TYPES OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
- Machine languages — interpreted directly in hardware
- Assembly languages — thin wrappers over a corresponding machine language
- High-level languages — anything machine-independent
- System languages — designed for writing low-level tasks, like memory and process management
- Scripting languages — generally extremely high-level and powerful
- Domain-specific languages — used in highly special-purpose areas only
- Visual languages — non-text based
- Esoteric languages — not really intended to be used
Early history
The first programming languages predate the modern computer.
During a nine-month period in 1842-1843, Ada Lovelace translated the memoir of Italian mathematician Luigi Menabrea about Charles Babbage's newest proposed machine, the Analytical Engine. With the article she appended a set of notes which specified in complete detail a method for calculating Bernoulli numbers with the Analytical Engine, recognized by some historians as the world's first computer program.
MODERN HISTORY
III. WHAT IS PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE THEORY
is a branch of computer science that deals with the design, implementation, analysis, characterization, and classification of programming languages and their individual features. It falls within the discipline of computer science, both depending on and affecting mathematics, software engineering and linguistics. It is a well-recognized branch of computer science, and an active research area, with results published in numerous journals dedicated to PLT as well as in general computer science and engineering publications.
IV. COMPILER VS INTERPRETER
An Interpreter is a program that implements or simulates a virtual machine using the base set of instructions of a programming language as its machine language.
You can also think of an Interpreter as a program that implements a library containing the implementation of the basic instruction set of a programming language in machine language.
An Interpreter reads the statements of a program, analyzes them and then executes them on the virtual machine by calling the corresponding instructions of the library.
A Compiler is a program that translates code of a programming language in machine code, also called object code. The object code can be executed directly on the machine where it was compiled.
V. DEFINING SYNTAX
A. CHARACTER SET
-A SET OF CHARACTER.
B. SYNTAX GROUP
-is a group made up of mainly staff and postgraduates from the department of Phonetics and Linguistics at UCL who share an interest in minimalist syntax. Linguists from other departments or other colleges are very welcome to join us. The group meets every two weeks or so.
C. SYNTAX AND PROGRAM RELIABILITY
-The Ariane-5 was a reusable space vehicle designed and manufactured in Europe. On its maiden flight, the vehicle was destroyed in the launch phase, due to a software error. An unhandled floating-point overflow was the problem. The software was written in Ada, the language which, several years ago, the U.S. Defense Department decreed was to used for all military systems.
Software errors have killed innocent people. In an early infamous example, a computer controlled the X-ray dosage in a medical machine used to treat cancer patients. A programming error caused the machine to give lethal doses during radiation treatment, instead of the much smaller doses actually prescribed. Unfortunately, the lethality of the doses was not immediately detected and several patients were affected.
